Pandemic prompts the question: What is future of public transportation in Eastern Iowa?

Bus ridership in Eastern Iowa is slowly increasing, but hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels yet as agencies continue to navigate challenges including finding enough drivers and better ways to serve commuters whose needs may have forever changed.

Agencies are juggling how to get riders back on buses with a workforce shortage while assessing what the era of more people working from home means for the future of public transit.

Rides across the state dropped by about 13 million over a two-year period from fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2021, said Kristin Haar, public transit director with the Iowa Department of Transportation. As the current budget year prepares to wrap up in June, Haar has heard anecdotally that numbers are slowly coming back.

“I'm not thinking that this year is bouncing back too rapidly. (I’m) hoping it will be better than fiscal year ‘21 was but time will tell when we see those numbers and statistics come out,” Haar said.

Public transit ridership numbers

The slow-to-rebound ridership trend holds true for Cedar Rapids.

City Transit Manager Brad DeBrower said in fiscal 2019, the last full budget year before COVID-19 struck, total ridership was nearly 1.25 million. Before the pandemic reduced and initially shut down transit operations, fiscal 2020 ridership increased, in part because the city partnered with the Cedar Rapids Community School District, Kirkwood Community College and Coe College so students could present an ID and ride at no cost.

But the 2021 budget year that ended June 30, 2021, saw ridership sit at just 44.7 percent of pre-pandemic levels, or 556,654 rides total. The current budget year that ends June 30 isn’t far behind, totaling 532,244 through March.

Iowa City Transit has “not recovered fully from the pandemic,” either, but ridership is higher than when the pandemic first started, said Darian Nagle-Gamm, the city’s transportation director. Ridership is down about 40 percent compared with numbers before the pandemic, she added.

Ridership in fiscal 2019 — from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019 — was close to 1.5 million, according to data in Iowa City’s fiscal 2023 budget. Fiscal 2020 decreased to 1.1 million and another decrease happened in fiscal 2021 where ridership was just over 525,000.

The University of Iowa’s transit system, Cambus, is seeing ridership increase but it has also not returned to pre-pandemic levels yet. There was a “steep decline” in ridership from March 2020 to summer 2021, said Mia Brunelli, Cambus operations manager.

Cambus typically provides 3.5 million rides each year, Brunelli said. There were 1.3 million rides in fiscal year 2021.

As of late February, Cambus has provided 1.5 million rides in the current fiscal year, Brunelli said. Ridership numbers in fiscal 2022 are expected to increase by 82 percent compared with fiscal 2021, Brunelli added.

The 380 Express has seen ridership increase “pretty steadily” since summer 2021, said Brock Grenis, transit planner and administrator with the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, which manages the service. The Cedar Rapids-to-Iowa City bus service launched in late 2018 due to interstate construction.

Ridership for the 380 Express in 2019 — the first full year of service — was 60,121. Ridership dropped to 45,754 in 2020 but increased to 55,219 in 2021. The first three months of 2022 had ridership of 16,219 — a nearly 40 percent increase from the same time in 2021.

“I think it's kind of reflective of more people being back to work and at the school at the University of Iowa,” Grenis said. “We're seeing a lot more people ride to the hospitals and to the university campus.”

Why hasn’t ridership bounced back?

Ridership numbers not fully bouncing back could mean a few things, Nagle-Gamm said.

There might still be hesitancy to use transit, or people have gotten out of the habit. Additionally, there is “the wildcard factor” of what commuting patterns will be as employers navigate working from home or hybrid policies for their employees, she said.

Haar agreed, saying the challenges “all have collided at once,” adding how “work from home absolutely has had an effect.”

Nagle-Gamm said Iowa City is looking closely at how commuting patterns have shifted and what that could look like in the future.

As COVID-19 transmission is now rated “low” in Johnson County, Nagle-Gamm said, it’s too soon to tell what impact that will have on ridership. She hopes people will return to transit who didn’t feel comfortable riding the bus at the height of the pandemic.

As business is slow to return to the “normal” office pace and some employees continue to work from home, leaving Cedar Rapids’ urban core — a transit hub — more empty than before 2020, it’s unclear if and when ridership will fully bounce back.

DeBrower said Cedar Rapids still is not charging fares to ride the bus for the time being, and higher gas prices may prompt people to use public transit or hop on a bus for short rides.

But for those who have opted to avoid public transit, DeBrower said the recent federal ruling dropping the mask mandate for public transit may be a pro for some riders and a con for others. He noted ridership among the disabled and elderly populations who are more at-risk for severe illness or death from a COVID-19 infection have been particularly slow to go back to using Cedar Rapids Transit.

“I think they’re going to be the last groups to truly bounce back,” DeBrower said.

Workforce challenges

Iowa transit is not immune from the workforce challenges facing other organizations and industries. Haar said transit agencies have tried to increase wages, offer bonuses and come up with new ways to recruit drivers.

Effective last July, Cedar Rapids approved a salary step for transit drivers, operations clerks and service workers starting at $19.26 an hour for the first four months, and ending at $26.70 for those who have worked 25 or more months. Those rates are slated to increase by 3 percent this July. Longevity rates also apply as a supplement to base pay for employees who stay longer than five years, increasing every five years.

Still, DeBrower said, Cedar Rapids Transit is short 10 bus drivers, with 38 on board out of 48 total positions. Four are about to go through training, but he said sometimes people find the job’s not what they expected and decide not to become a driver afterward.

“We pay a good wage and we have a good benefit package with the city, so it’s sometimes frustrating that we don’t get more applicants,” DeBrower said. “ … We’re hoping that we can go ahead and do a little bit of outreach to try to let folks know that this is a good position for someone that’s looking for a steady job, but it’s been a challenge as far as staffing.”

Cambus introduced a $400 hiring incentive program last December, which is part of a pilot program by university human resources to recruit and retain staff in student positions, Brunelli said.

The council of governments contracts with Windstar Lines to operate the bus service for 380 Express routes. Grenis said Windstar has also had challenges recruiting and retaining drivers.

While it’s been a challenge, it hasn’t impacted service, Grenis said, adding, “we’re pretty fortunate that we haven’t had to miss any routes for scheduled service.”

Impact on Iowa City’s Sunday service

Nagle-Gamm said the workforce has been challenging throughout the entire pandemic, but especially in the last six months.

Iowa City pushed back the timeline for a pilot program to look at adding Sunday service because of hiring. he department will be in front of the City Council, possibly next month, for a work session on the Sunday service pilot, Nagle-Gamm said.

The Iowa City Council last summer approved an overhaul of the city’s transit system. Included in the revamp was a two-year Sunday service pilot program anticipated to roll out in late 2021 or early 2022. That timeline has been in flux with hiring additional staff taking longer than expected. Nagle-Gamm said the department has seen a “pretty significant decrease” in applicants for open positions. Staff also needs time to train the new drivers.

When there are staff absences, the administrative team needs to find replacements or drive the buses themselves, Nagle-Gamm said. This has taken away planning time for Sunday service.

“If people call in sick, we have to find somebody to drive those buses,” Nagle-Gamm said. “It is not an option for us to not have those buses out there on schedule.”

What is the future of transit?

Haar said the way to move forward is for public transit to figure out what services people need now and how to best serve them.

She said some agencies are exploring on-demand services instead of the fixed route of a traditional system. Des Moines Area Regional Transit last November implemented a pilot project to serve parts of Ankeny on demand.

Nagle-Gamm said Iowa City has “formulated our (transit) system for the future.” She said the city will continue enhancing transit to make it more comfortable and sustainable for the public. Earlier this year, four new electric buses hit the streets in Iowa City. The Proterra electric buses replace four diesel buses.

Cedar Rapids has opted to study how other cities’ electric bus pilot programs pan out. In the meantime, the city has applied to the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization to help hire a consultant to create a zero-emission transition plan for Cedar Rapids Transit. This would assess feasibility of electric buses and explore what infrastructure updates would be needed.

If Cedar Rapids moves forward after the study, a plan would be submitted to the federal government for zero-emission bus grant funding in the next cycle around mid-2023.

“It’s our hope then that we will have something by this time next year that will help the city make a determination as to which way to move forward in the future,” DeBrower said.

In addition to working on the Sunday service pilot in Iowa City, Nagle-Gamm said there are additional improvements to the transit system on the horizon, such as bus stop improvements. Other phases include evaluating options for late night on-demand service and evaluating a low-income fare program.

Cedar Rapids also is working on an equitable fare program and restoring Saturday service.

"We're hoping that these improvements (from the transit study) will not only work well for the people who rely on transit every day but also will invite more people to transit,” Nagle-Gamm said.

Despite some of the challenges brought on by the pandemic, Nagle-Gamm said it is an exciting time to be working in transportation.

"All of these challenges are proving great opportunities for us to learn, to get closer to the community needs, to be able to transform our services,” Nagle-Gamm said.

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